


midnight oil

by silentsaint



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Enemies With Benefits, Enemies to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Pillow Talk, Post-Advent Children (Compilation of FFVII), amazingly no actual sex, enemies while lovers?, friends with benefits? enemies with benefits?, pillow talk of the complex variety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:01:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26148349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentsaint/pseuds/silentsaint
Summary: The devil’s embrace is a warm one.
Relationships: Sephiroth & Cloud Strife, Sephiroth/Cloud Strife
Comments: 18
Kudos: 250





	midnight oil

**Author's Note:**

> this was meant to be smut but then they started talking and this monstrosity birthed itself in my google docs
> 
> also, this fic was inspired by a song of the same name!! do yourselves a favor and check it out. huge sephcloud vibes. huge. [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VOE-DI5B3Y)

It is never gentle.

It is many things, some of which are the great heaving tides of an ocean during a maelstrom, or the crushing heavy heat of a raging forest fire. It is the subsummation when the sky is overcast at night and the upper realm is nothing but a deadly black. It is a small stone at the bottom of the sea, for all intents and purposes now utterly resigned to being worn down to sand without ever seeing the light of the sun again.

His body shudders beneath the weight of something much larger and heavier. There is the ungraceful sound of flesh slapping roughly against flesh and the even more obscene noises of wet and slick. Time ceases to matter in feverish moments such as these. 

Cloud stares at the bare ceiling, purposefully does not look at the abomination that he has welcomed between his legs, and tries not to think about any of it. It’s not very difficult to not think, especially when his entire abdomen is suffused with liquid gold, coiling tighter and tighter until it feels as though his body will snap in half from the delicious strain. 

_This was my choice._

The hands on his hips are firm, but they do not quite cross the border into crushing. Sex and violence should bleed together easily for men with a history like theirs, but somehow they never do in the way that Cloud expects them to.

For Sephiroth, this is probably just as much about ‘establishing dominance’ as anything else, just in the same way he probably thinks about their more mundane clashes. It’s just as much a taunt to press him into the softness of a mattress and send his mind reeling into warm blankness as it is to tease him with the flickering feint of a sword. 

_To hell with it,_ is all Cloud really has to say on the matter. _He can have whatever dominance he wants over me as long as he’s not causing actual problems._

Oddly enough, it seems to work, or it at very least cuts down the amount of attempted-global-genocide issues. At least, to the point that Cloud is aware of. 

_This arrangement is...really fucking odd, isn’t it._

The first time they had slept together, it was halfway into a fight. Cloud had lost the grip of his sword handle and had gone directly for the jugular, not really expecting to succeed. It didn’t, at least not in the way he had intended. But it did end with him perched on Sephiroth’s hips, trying to pin the man to the ground with arguable efficacy. 

It’s hard to say who struck who first, but it quickly turned into a struggle of trying to hold the other down, swords laying forgotten somewhere off to the side. Some might have labeled it ‘fighting dirty’ or ‘unsportsmanlike’ to pull on your opponents hair in a serious match. Frankly, Cloud was of the opinion that if your opponent wore their hair loose and down to their knees and it gets fucking everywhere in a hand to hand struggle, it would be harder to _not_ pull on it at some point. 

Be that as it may, the _sound_ that Sephiroth made when his hair was tugged was where things had started to even further derail off their normal course. 

For a moment, Sephiroth had gasped, a breathy and quiet sound as though he hadn’t intended it to be heard at all. For a moment, his head had arched back into the touch, leaving the pale column of his throat exposed.

For a moment, Cloud had looked at the amalgamation of attempted-deification and utter ruination currently sitting on top of him and saw nothing but a man. And he’d simply lain there, and stared at him with a peculiar sense of detachment.

Needless to say, that particular altercation had ended with impalement not made from metal, and the normal pattern of their interactions (which had almost been beginning to feel quite dependable) now shattered into tiny pieces, irrevocable in it’s disarray. 

_How,_ Cloud thinks blearily, as he lays in the juxtaposition of post-coital glow and acute awareness of an enemy presence, _do these situations even happen?_

To accurately describe laying in the afterglow with a man who he has murdered three times and who has murdered more people than he would care to count is nothing short of an impossible task. It’s as if the warmth and euphoria of after-sex combined with the instinctual awareness of a predator cancels out, leaving a sensation that is neither one or the other. Neither pleasurable nor otherwise. It simply is.

Even if Sephiroth’s eyes are closed, Cloud doesn’t bother telling himself that the man won’t be able to track his motions by hearing alone, and thus stays still. The ceiling is not a particularly interesting thing to look at it, but it’s a hell of a lot easier than looking at the way Sephiroth’s face relaxes slightly when he’s half asleep. 

The thing lying next to him is something _other,_ housed in a vaguely human shaped shell, or at least that’s what Cloud keeps trying to tell himself. It’s easier to process, to say that this is merely an extension of Sephiroth’s unholy fascination with him, and an extension of his willingness to indulge Sephiroth’s piqued interest for the sake of the man leaving everyone else the hell alone. 

“If you think any harder, you’re going to hurt yourself.”

The words are quiet, seemingly weighed down by drowsiness. Sephiroth’s tone is as unruffled as ever, even as his appearance is nowhere near as undisturbed. 

Cloud spares himself a glance at one of the rosy pink marks he left on the side of Sephiroth’s neck. It’ll bruise slightly, and then heal with remarkable alacrity. The physical marks they leave on each other never last very long, for the same set of reasons. 

_Most of them. The scar from the top of the Shinra Tower still aches sometimes._

Of course, it’s difficult to avoid Sephiroth’s acid-green gaze when he turns his face to him. The monster’s eyes are slitted open, staring at him with the combined smugness of a cat and the coldness of a reptile.

 _Is it evil of me,_ Cloud wonders sometimes, _to try to dehumanize him just as much as he’s tried to dehumanize himself, so to speak?_

The question of if Sephiroth could’ve rightly ever been considered a human is something that haunts the drafty halls of his mind, pinching his awareness and keeping him awake some nights. It’s easier to think no, to say that someone with such a convoluted and misguided conception could never have been truly afforded the grace of humanity.

_But...that’s not quite right, is it._

_If I’m still human, even after what was done to me, even after voices that weren’t mine echoed through my head so loudly I couldn’t hear my own thoughts, even after becoming so...so…_

_By that logic, he’s human. Whatever else he is, he’s also human. Or, at the very least, he was once. No matter how much it’s easier not to admit it._

How odd, to find it easier to think of the man he’s been sleeping with for the past while to be _anything_ other than human.

“Cloud. Come here.”

There’s a small inhale of breath, a reflexive gasp on his part as Cloud is forcibly pulled back into the present moment and tilts his chin up to meet Sephiroth’s ageless gaze. The man has the edge of his jaw caught between his fingers, holding Cloud in place and scrutinizing him with the same unreadable contemplation as ever. 

“You’re drifting often tonight. Have your thoughts finally begun to consume you?” Sephiroth’s tone is impassive, and for the life of him Cloud genuinely can’t tell how much is an impenetrable facade of the dramatic and how much is just the man genuinely not knowing how to talk like a normal person. 

“I’m...preoccupied.” He twists his chin out of Sephiroth’s fingers, laying back against the pillows properly. 

There’s no point in turning away to hide from the electric feel of Sephiroth’s eyes on him, not when it’ll bore right through his body all the same no matter how much he looks away from it. And so they remain facing each other, the shadows deep between them in the darkness of the room. 

It doesn’t make much of a difference, not when the sickly green glow of their eyes will always light up the space between them.

“If you’re still able to think so hard then I evidently haven’t been doing a good enough job.” There’s something honey-like in the very nature of Sephiroth’s voice, something that turns every word out of his mouth into sugary poison. It makes dealing with him all the more infuriating, even if his proclivities for theatrics add a comforting sense of the surreal. “You’re not allowed to drift away, Cloud.” 

He’s almost too exhausted to roll his eyes, but Sephiroth’s faux aggrieved tone makes him do it anyway. “Or what, you’ll spank me?”

“If that will keep you here.” Attempts to fluster the man in that way usually backfire spectacularly, as Cloud has had many an occasion to find out. It’s difficult to get any sort of rise out of him, but it’s especially difficult to do it when Sephiroth knows Cloud’s body almost better than he himself does at this point. He has learned to play it like an instrument, and if his prowess were any less directly beneficial to Cloud, he might’ve genuinely resented him for it. 

Cloud sighs. It’s far past midnight, that much he knows for sure. In the morning, he will either wake up to an empty bed and a sour feeling of ongoing guilt in the base of his stomach, or he will slip away before the dawn, resolutely ignoring how human Sephiroth’s face is when he sleeps. 

“Whatever. I’m going to sleep.” There’s an animal instinct in the back of his mind that dictates he move closer to the source of warmth to sleep, but dignity demands otherwise. Cuddling up to Sephiroth in order to sleep...now that’s just too much.

 _You’ve done just about everything else with him,_ a snarky little voice in the back of Cloud’s brain pipes up. _What, you can’t put your head on his chest to sleep but you have no issue with putting your mouth on his-_

Just to get the voice to shut up, Cloud flops over onto his other side, facing away from Sephiroth. Behind him, it’s most likely his imagination, but it’s as if he can _hear_ Sephiroth’s smile, inordinately amused with the display of disgust. It’s as if he finds pleasure in how Cloud’s continual resistance makes the moments where he _does_ break all the more sweet.

_Fucker. I don’t know why I put up with you._

Dreams claim him before he can think up any more creative insults.

The dreams themselves are rather mundane, which is a win in Cloud’s book. Their grey-blue murkiness defies description, but the nagging feeling of opposing wills and warring ideations follows him all the way into their depths.

_The devil’s embrace is a warm one._

Cloud shifts, and Sephiroth’s arms shift around him. There is the warm roughness of skin on skin, the smoothness of the way fingers trail over the skin of his back.

It is far from the first time he has woken up with the devil in his bed. It will most likely not be the last. 

Cloud inhales, and allows his eyes to open to meet the glory of morning.

Sephiroth is already awake, as he usually is. It’s a rare occasion when Cloud is the first to wake, and when he isn’t...he always wakes alone.

“You’re still here?” Cloud’s voice comes out a low rasp, rough with sleep and a fair measure of disbelief. “What, did you miss your bus back to wherever-the-fuck?” 

Feline eyes blink back slowly at him, and Sephiroth looks almost _amused,_ for some indiscernible reason. “Is that disappointment I detect? That’s quite rude, Cloud.” 

It seems a tiny bit too over-dramatic to suffocate him with a pillow then and there, so Cloud just groans, and summarily buries his face back into the sheets.

_Damn him. Damn him for making this into what it is. Whatever the fuck it is at this point._

An elegant hand trails up his side, and finds a place toying with the blond spikes on the back of his head. It’s a pleasant sensation, or at least it _would_ be, if not for who the hand belongs to. Cloud grits his teeth harder and tries to ignore it.

“Cloud.” If he didn’t know any better, he’d say Sephiroth sounds almost petulant about being ignored. “It’s time to wake up.”

His first instinct is to say ‘fuck off’ and drop back off again, but that accursed hand is making such soothing circles at the nape of his neck that it seems a crime not to enjoy it. “...you’re not my boss.”

“Of course not. I’m your god.” Sephiroth says it so matter of factly that Cloud bursts out laughing, wheezing at the unexpected hilarity. He doubles nearly in two, trying to choke back the hysterical cackling ripping its way out of his throat.

When the laughter finally dies away, he’s left with shoulders shaking slightly, staring up at the ceiling with what must be a slightly unhinged smile. “You really just say things like that and mean it, don’t you.”

If Sephiroth is at all perturbed by the outburst, he’s certainly hiding it well. “I simply speak the truth you don’t want to hear.” 

Cloud chokes back another snort at that, and chooses to ignore how surreal this conversation is quickly becoming. “What, you want sacrifices or prayers or something?”

_Snarking back and forth with him in the light of morning? I must still be having a weird dream._

“Hardly.” Sephiroth rises up onto his elbows then, leaning over to the side so he can bend over Cloud, pinning him back onto the bed with nothing but his eyes. “The only thing I require from you is worship, and the entirety of your being.”

It would be so laughably easy to headbutt him from this position, but Cloud refrains for the time being, citing drowsiness as his excuse. “Oh, so that’s all.” There’s an odd sense of curiosity if Sephiroth even bothers to recognize things like sarcasm anymore. He must on some level, if the way he verbally bites back at Cloud is any indication.

“You already belong to me in body and in soul. Your offering has already occurred, and I have accepted it.” Were it anyone else, were they both literally _anyone_ else, Cloud might’ve called that tone ‘fondness’.

He sighs. “You’re delusional, and I’m a fool for indulging you.”

“The only delusions here are your own.” Something possessive curls it’s way into Sephiroth’s expression, something dark and warm. “You’ve convinced yourself you don’t want what I offer to you.”

...it’s a little bit true, and Cloud resents him for saying it.

The obvious and immediate reaction is to try to turn it back around, and so Cloud juts his chin out and scoffs. “What the hell do you even get out of this anyway? And don’t say sex, because I know that’s not the main thing you’re here for.”

“It’s simple, really. You are the sun and I am the moon that orbits you.”

The metaphor is a bit much, but...he’s not wrong, the more that Cloud considers it. They are alike and yet polarized, immutably united in flesh, mind, and spirit, and yet diametrically opposed in willpower and in desire.

At least...not as much recently, Cloud allows. He transfers his gaze to the inoffensive pillowcase to his right.

“And...that means what?” It’s too much to ask to look up at him, not when the questioning of the nature of their connection lies between them. Some things are just better left ignored and unsaid, in Cloud’s personal opinion. 

“We are intertwined, you and I.” Sephiroth runs a hand over his spikes in what could almost be construed as an affectionate gesture. “You can continue denying it, or you can accept our bond for what it is.”

“I wasn’t talking about our cellular bond or whatever.” Cloud swallows around the rock conveniently wedged in the back of his throat. “I was more talking about our...feelings. About each other.”

There isn’t even the slightest bit of hesitation. “Everything, naturally.”

“...what?” Cloud can feel the onset of a headache, even as his heart begins a traitorous thumping between his ribs. It’s unfair how Sephiroth’s voice can still tie his stomach into knots despite everything that occurred between them.

“My feelings for you. They encompass everything, but you are not unaware of this. Love and hatred are the same, just as peace and war are the same in a cosmic sense. If you had accepted my offer to look across the cosmos together and view the eternal-”

It’s definitely not fighting fair but Cloud darts up to kiss him, just to get him to shut up more than anything else. Sephiroth responds as he quite often does to being kissed suddenly, which is to say receptive. It was not intended to be particularly impassioned, but as he catches Sephiroth’s lower lip between his teeth, Cloud meets the realization that there is nothing comparable to this feeling.

_There is never going to be anybody else but him, is there. Even if I tried, even if I try to move on and let go...he would still haunt me like my own shadow._

“Why me?” He pulls just far back enough from the kiss to mutter the words against Sephiroth’s mouth. “What made you look at me and think, ‘wow, I’m going to drag that guy down with me if it’s the last thing I do’?”

Sephiroth is silent for a very long moment, long enough for Cloud to lean away and widen their proximity slightly. He looks almost...measured, pale jade eyes slightly unfocused.

When he finally speaks, his voice is low, and a little rough around the edges. “I did not remember you, the first time.” 

There’s no need to ask what he means by ‘the first time’. Cloud remembers the drab steel of the interior of the Nibel reactor much more vividly than he would prefer.

“You were...an anomaly. Your face, staring up at me with wide eyes and a horrible look of anger was one of the last things I saw, before I fell.” There’s a very far-away quality to those serpentine eyes, as if Sephiroth is also seeing the grey plating of the walls of Jenova’s chamber instead of bedroom walls and morning sun. “You were not fully present in my mind until after our flesh became alike.”

Cloud presses back against the rush of memories carrying _painmakogreenglass_ and grits his teeth together. 

“But I did not choose you.” Those endless eyes finally look back at him, and Cloud stares into their jade depths and finds no trace of a lie. “You chose yourself, when you carved my body in half and threw me from a ledge.”

It seems unwise to trust his voice when his throat feels packed full with gravel, so Cloud just shrugs jerkily and hopes it conveys the right emotions of _sorry-not-sorry-about-that._

They really are just two fucked up souls, left bastardized by the universe and seeking communion in their shared gaping wounds, and hoping their blood will either heal or poison the other. 

“If I died, you won’t be able to pull yourself back to life, will you.” Cloud whispers into the space between them. “If I die, I take both of us with me.”

“You are not allowed to die.” There’s a very self-congratulatory tone to Sephiroth’s voice, as much as there is an odd twist to his features. “You will persist for an eternity and I along with you.”

Ignoring him, Cloud picks up a stray piece of silver hair laying between them and fiddles with it like a ribbon. “I wonder, when I die if we’ll still be intertwined in a weird way. I wouldn’t put it past you to attach our souls in the Lifestream, or something weird like that.”

As if the man has finally run out of strange and vaguely ominous things to say, Sephiroth is silent. When he moves, he still does not speak, but in a sweep of his arms, Cloud finds himself pulled flush against Sephiroth’s body, face buried in his collarbones and chest to chest.

“As if I haven’t already done so.” The man’s voice is quiet, and still a little distant. “You are my focal point and I am your all.” 

Cloud says nothing, but he doesn’t struggle in the hold. 

_Is this...an embrace?_

He closes his eyes, and allows himself to breathe in Sephiroth’s odd warmth. 

_This can’t possibly be love. But it’s not hatred either. I’m...too tired to hate him anymore. Not any more or less than I hate myself._

“What are you planning to do in the future?” He speaks into the skin of Sephiroth’s bare chest, lips almost flush with the pale ivory. “Once you’ve gotten bored of this arrangement.” 

Sephiroth sighs into the top of his head, and Cloud ignores how the movement instinctively sends a rush of warmth down his spine. “Have my promises of eternity really made so little an impact?”

Cloud glowers, pulling away far enough to scowl up at him. “It’s hard to take you seriously when you talk about my eyes being the cosmic radiance of the universe, or whatever.”

“I have never once lied to you.” Sephiroth looks, almost, fondly down at his murderer. “As for my aspirations, those would indeed involve mapping out the cosmic radiance of the universe for the foreseeable future.”

It’s somewhat difficult to come up with a response to _that,_ so Cloud just makes a quiet sound of disbelief in the back of his throat. 

_Better the devil you know, I suppose. It’ll make more sense when we go back to...having sex instead of talking._

And isn’t that the surreal thought.

Sephiroth’s hands find their way back to the wisps of hair at the nape of his neck, and Cloud’s eyes slip shut, curling back to faceplant on Sephiroth’s chest. It’s warm, where the sun is streaming across their bed from the window.

It’s...oddly gentle.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/SEFIKURAS) || [tumblr](https://sephirothcrescent.tumblr.com/)


End file.
